While the gray-haired canon talked of the priceless treasures for which he has long been responsible, the choir-boys began their practice. The music filled the mighty building, and rang in a hundred echoes from column to column and from the tiles of the floor to the perfectly joined stones of the vaulted roof. The flare of our torch so lighted the sculptured figures that they seemed alive and moving through the air; the singing became the voices of these men and women, some of whom were good, all of whom were human, and who spoke so long ago. I found particular satisfaction in treading the stones of Rochdale, the city of John Bright. Here during our Civil War, in spite of "soup-kitchens" and pestilence, the cotton-workers stood against any petition to the English government to demand the lifting of the blockade of the Southern ports. John Bright's influence for freedom was quite as effective at home as it was in Parliament. Scotland gave me the continuation of the story British men and women are writing in blood around the world, a story of sacrifice and devotion unsurpassed in history. The pages of the story blend with the pages that recite the glory of Wallace at Bannockburn and of Robert the Bruce. From Castle Stirling I looked out across the windings of the firth; from that Gibraltar of Scottish kings my eye followed the massive wanderings of the Grampians. I caught just a glimpse of the Burns country at Dunoon, the home of Highland Mary, where her wonderful bronze memorial looks out across the estuary of the Clyde. Here is the home of another Scottish bard, Harry Lauder. He is a singer of a different sort, but he plays upon the same harp of which his illustrious fellow countryman was such a master. From the depths of a supreme sorrow he has lifted up a new song that has comforted a weeping world. Some day his fellow townsmen will rear another monument where the little city looks out toward the sea. On it will be the name of the gallant "Captain John," Harry Lauder's heroic and only son. But my wartime journey was not one of aimless wanderings. It brought me to many shrines; it brought me face to face with those who fight the battles of Britain and those who lead them, into the homes of a people whose hospitality, even as their courage and devotion, is unsurpassed throughout the world. But it was a trip seriously intended and with stern business involved.